chukchi sea

Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the Louisiana court decision has no effect on the administration's decision to suspend until 2011 new offshore drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

"We wish it did," said Julie Hasquet, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska. "But we don't think it does."

There is an important way for President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to show they are absorbing the lessons of the gulf oil spill and to reaffirm their pledge to proceed cautiously with offshore drilling in the future. That is to withhold the permits Shell Oil needs to proceed with a highly controversial drilling project in the Arctic Ocean.

A proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean as early as this summer received initial permits from the Minerals Management Service office in Alaska at the same time federal auditors were questioning the office about its environmental review process.

The approvals also came after many of the agency’s most experienced scientists had left, frustrated that their concerns over environmental threats from drilling had been ignored.

Consider that while the Gulf "cleanup" efforts have been stalled by 8-foot seas, waves in the Arctic can swell to 20 feet on a semi-regular basis. In the icy north, winds that are famously stronger than those of the Gulf punish any vessel on the water.

With the spotlight shining on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the executives sizzling in the hot seat on Capitol Hill, environmental advocates are looking north.

They’re worried that Shell Oil will start drilling in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska before the U.S. government reports on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drill rig disaster. And the environmental groups are not comforted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s reassurances that no new drilling will take place until the government report is completed by May 28.

A North Slope village united Wednesday with some of the heaviest hitters in the environmental community to challenge a plan by Shell Oil to drill off Northwest Alaska this summer.

The legal challenge to Shell's approved drilling plan for the Chukchi Sea was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Groups recently filed a similar challenge to Shell's plan for exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northeast coastline.

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Gulf-scale disaster would be even more catastrophic in Arctic Ocean

“The Gulf Coast catastrophe is another tragic example of the human and environmental cost of invasive and dangerous oil and gas drilling. We must never forget the families of those lost in the accident, nor the coastal communities that will feel its effects for years to come.

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WASHINGTON – More than 150,000 people have asked the federal government to halt plans currently in process to open 73.4 million acres of the Arctic Ocean to oil and gas leasing – the largest block of Arctic Ocean waters yet to be offered to the oil and gas industry.